Worldview: Iraq Intel
by A Concerned Citizen
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Revised 25 August 2008
Table of Contents
Link Archive
Topics
Key Excerpts from Archives
Col. Wilkerson: WMD Intel was a 'Hoax'
Kwiatkowski: Intel never supported claims
Scott Ritter's Views
Gordon Prather Recounts Pre-Invasion
Articles on Douglas Feith
Moyers' Damning Documentary
George Tenet on 60 Minutes
Other Articles
Iraq Intelligence: Link Archive
Introduction (28 Jun 06): Until recently, I had tended to give the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt on the WMD fiasco, that is, on the shocking failure to find the WMD in Iraq, for which we went to war. To be precise, I had rejected the cries of 'deceiver' and 'warmonger' raised by some on the left, since one should not use such inflammatory language unless one is certain about intentions. Then there was the mantra that 'all the intelligence agencies' thought Saddam (probably) had (nuclear?) WMD, which seemed to have some basis in fact. Now I am not so sure about any of this...
No doubt one could argue that the administration 'cherry-picked' from uncertain intelligence and made its best case like a trial lawyer. On the other hand, one could argue that when in doubt about something as serious as WMD in the hands of terrorists, one should err on the side of paranoia. This issue will not be settled anytime soon, nor do I expect it to go away anytime soon. I will begin by collecting relevant articles as I come across them (even if they are old).
UPDATE (21 Jan 07): I just discovered the February 2006 confession by Col. Wilkerson, a top aide to then Secretary of State Colin Powell, that the prewar WMD evidence was a 'hoax', particularly the crucial evidence relayed by Powell to the UN Security Council prior to the invasion (scroll up a bit to the menu). Since Col. Wilkerson was such a high-level insider, as well as a lifelong Republican and a military man, this has changed my mind about the Bush administration. I can no longer give it the benefit of the doubt regarding prewar WMD intelligence. This realization is quite outrageous and shocking. I discuss it some more under the Wilkerson section.
It looks like the crazy, America-hating, Bush-hating lefties were right after all, at least on this, though perhaps not based on any solid understanding on their part! My suspicion of conservative and right-wing websites has skyrocketed. Now I'd better be careful not to start believing every thing the lefty sites say either!
Another important point: The pundits and experts suddenly all seem rather worthless, either because they were so easily deceived by the administration, or because they didn't do their homework. Even the stratospheric insider Bob Woodward was busy chumming up to the administration for many years, with two obliging books, before his recent defection to the anti-war crowd (or so I have heard). Let's not even mention the patently fanatical Bill Kristols and other Fox News robots. The more 'enlightened' Tom Friedmans, Christopher Hitchens, and many others also look like imbeciles. And dangerous ones too. (To be sure, such language should only be used when thousands die unjustifiably.) So what should we believe about Iran?
UPDATE (26 Apr 07): A damning documentary by Bill Moyers proves once and for all how delinquent our establishment press (New York Times, Washington Post, etc.) was on Iraqi WMD prior to the invasion. They clearly could have known that there was no good evidence that Saddam had them, and much good evidence that he didn't. They served as little more than a megaphone for the establishment propaganda, a self-appointed Pravda if you will. This follows an old pattern: the establishment press has always been in favor of our wars, especially at the beginning, before the public soured. The big shot journalists acquire their 'importance' by scratching the backs of important government officials, who then feed them lies that are given 'respectability' by the supposed elite nature of the newspapers in question. Power is the perception of power, and people jut love to suck up to power, especially if they are ambitious and career-minded. The truth is barely an afterthought, if there is any at all.
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Robert Dreyfuss & Dave Gilson: Iraq 101
US State Dept: Security Council Resolutions Concerning Iraq
IAEA Report to UNSC in Oct 1997
Frontline: Spying on Saddam (1999)
White House: Joint Resolution to Authorize Force Against Iraq
Congressional Record: The 2002 Authorization of Force
UK Gov: UN Documents on Iraq of early March 2003
Gordon Prather recounts the pre-invasion
Wikipedia: Failed Iraqi peace initiatives
Mother Jones: Lie by Lie [example]
FAIR: Iraq and the Media: A Critical Timeline
Video: Good documentary on AIPAC also covers WMD fiasco
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Scott Ritter: The Case for Iraq's Qualitative Disarmament
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Justin Raimondo: The Myth of the Saddam Bomb
Justin Raimondo: Saddam meets the man fron U.N.C.L.E.
Justin Raimondo: In wartime, everyone has a hidden agenda
David Cotright: A Hard Look at Iraq Sanctions
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March 2002
Julian Borger: Iraq: the myth and the reality
Justin Raimondo: Our hijacked foreign policy
Jeffrey Goldberg: The great terror
April 2002
Robert Parry: 'F--- Saddam', Bush said. 'We're taking him out.'
June 2002
Rep. Ron Paul: Inspection or Invasion in Iraq?
July 2002
Scott Ritter: Is Iraq a True Threat to the US?
Justin Raimondo: The Fix is In
August 2002
CNN: Defector: Iraq could have nukes by 2005
FAIR: USA Today Repeats Myths on Iraq Inspectors
Murray Polner: Sleepwalking & Silent
September 2002
NYT: U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts
Rep. Ron Paul: Questions that Won't Be Asked About Iraq
Justin Raimondo: Why this war? Oil and Israel
CNN: Iraq agrees to weapons inspections
White House: Iraq: Denial and Deception
BBC: US threat to stop Iraq inspections
WP: Experts question if tubes were meant for weapons program
McClatchy: Lack of hard evidence worries top U.S. officials
October 2002
Arms Control Today: Iraq: A Chronology of UN Inspections
Stephen Zunes: The Case Against a War with Iraq
White House: President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat
George Monbiot: Inspection as Invasion
Sen. Hillary Clinton: Iraq war authorization speech
US Senate: Iraq war authorization vote (roll call)
Sen. Chris Dodd: War and peace votes
Harry Browne: Iraq: 'A War Waiting for a Pretext'
November 2002
BBC: Timeline: Iraq weapons inspections
December 2002
Sen. Joe Biden: Iraq war speech
Francis Fukuyama: Beyond Our Shores
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January 2003
CNN: IAEA: Year for Iraq inspections
CNN: Transcript of Blix's remarks
PIPA: Americans on Iraq & UN inspections (PDF)
White House: 2003 State of the Union speech
February 2003
TIME: The Inspections So Far: The Blix Scorecard
Alan Bock: The Case Weakens, the Plot Thickens
Guardian: US claim dismissed by Blix
Adam Lebowitz: Scott Ritter in Tokyo
Justin Raimondo: Lies as far as the eye can see
Washington Post - ABC News Poll: US Public on Iraq
CBS: Inspectors Call U.S. Tips 'Garbage'
March 2003
Reuters: UN Iraq Inspectors Say U.S. Has Not Cooperated
CNN: Transcript of ElBaradei's U.N. presentation
IAEA: The Status of Nuclear Inspections in Iraq: An Update
CSM: The impact of Bush linking 9/11 and Iraq
Meet the Press: Cheney says 'We know Saddam seeking nukes'
Seymour Hirsh: Why was Perle meeting with Adnan Khashoggi?
CBS: Weapons Inspectors Leave Iraq
White House: Presidential Letter to Congress
CBS: Poll: Americans Support War Effort
ABC: Rumsfeld pinpoints nuke location
April 2003
Michael Lind: How neocons conquered Washington
May 2003
Seymour Hersh: Selective Intelligence
CounterPunch: WMD: Who Said What When
June 2003
WP: Some Iraq Analysts Felt Pressure From Cheney Visits
USA Today: Uranium reports doubted early on
Robert Dreyfuss: More Missing Intelligence
July 2003
David Corn: WMD: Who Knew What?
Justin Raimondo: Tracing the pattern of WMD lies back to the source
Julian Borger: The spies who pushed for war
Justin Raimondo: Who lied us into war?
David Remnick: Faith-Based Intelligence
Tim Dickinson: West Wing pipe dream
August 2003
Francis Fukuyama: The Real Intelligence Failure
WP: Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence
Alexander Cockburn: Judy Miller's War
David Corn: The neocons' new enemy, the CIA
September 2003
Independent: Blix: Saddam destroyed his WMD a decade ago
October 2003
Kagan & Kristol: Why We Went to War
Alan Reynolds: Mystery of the Vanishing Weapons
November 2003
Christopher Hitchens: Restating the Case for War
John Pilger: They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda
Peter Bergen: Laurie Mylroie: Neocons' favorite conspiracy theorist
December 2003
Karen Kwiatkowski: In Rumsfeld's Shop
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January 2004
Robert Dreyfuss: The Lie Factory
Kenneth Pollack: Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong
Rep. Jane Harman: Looking Back to Look Forward
Kenneth Pollack: Weapons of Misperception
WP: David Kay: 'We were almost all wrong'
CNN: Ex-Iraq inspector: Prewar intelligence failure 'disturbing'
February 2004
Laurie Mylroie: What Intelligence Failure in Iraq?
Gregory F. Treverton: Intelligence funhouse
Telegraph: Chalabi: 'We are heroes in error'
March 2004
Bruce G. Blair: The Logic of Intelligence Failure
Robert Scheer: Bush's Lies About Iraq
Edward Kennedy: Bush's Distortions Misled Congress in Its War Vote
Richard Clarke: Against All Enemies (quotes)
April 2004
Jack Shafer: Dealing With Defective Defectors
CNN: Woodward: Tenet told Bush WMD case a 'slam dunk'
May 2004
John Dizard: How Ahmed Chalabi conned the neocons
Andrew Cockburn: The Truth About Ahmed Chalabi
Arnaud de Borchgrave: Chalabi's Betrayal
July 2004
David Corn: Senate WMD Report Whacks CIA, Not Bush
October 2004
Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq's WMD
BBC: A Huge Failure of Intelligence [more]
Washington Post: U.S. 'Almost All Wrong' on Weapons
November 2004
Justin Raimondo: Purge at the CIA
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Wikipedia: Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq
Steve Clemons: Bolton pushed Niger uranium fiasco
NewsHour: Presidential Commission Faults US Agencies
CNN: Report: Iraq intelligence 'dead wrong'
Ray McGovern: Proof Bush Fixed The Facts
Kevin Zeese: An interview with James Bamford
Arianna Huffington: Everybody Didn't Get it Wrong on WMD
McClatchy: Administration tinkers with truth in challenging critics
James Bamford: The Man Who Sold the War
David Corn: Going to War on the Word of a Nutcase?
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NOW: Col. Wilkerson on WMD hoax
NY Public Radio: Were We Misled? Hitchens, Corn & others debate
Think Progress: Bush Ignored Warnings Of Iraqi Civil War
MSNBC: Iraqi diplomat gave U.S. prewar WMD details
World Magazine: What the Saddam Documents Show
Robert Scheer: Now Powell Tells Us
CSM: Bush had good reason to believe there were WMD in Iraq
Paul Pillar: Intelligence, Policy,and the War in Iraq
Kevin Woods: Saddam's Delusions
WP: Warnings on WMD 'Fabricator' Were Ignored, Ex-CIA Aide Says
David Corn: Senate Takes on Prewar WMD Controversy — Sort of
Sen. Carl Levin: Saddam Hussein was not linked with al-Qaida
David Corn: Cheney, 9/11 and the Truth about Iraq
David Corn: Sorry, Hitch - You're Wrong About Niger (+ response)
Independent: Diplomat's suppressed document lays bare the lies...
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Global Security: Report on US Intelligence Prewar WMD Assessment
CBS: Report Says Pentagon Manipulated Intel
Scott Ritter: Regime Change Is the Reason, Disarmament the Excuse
Robert Dreyfuss & Dave Gilson: Iraq 101
Craig Unger: From the Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Iraq
FAIR: Iraq and the Media: A Critical Timeline
Raimondo: Being a neocon means never having to say you're sorry
CSM: Pentagon report debunks prewar Iraq-Al Qaeda connection
WP: DOD Report: Hussein's Prewar Ties To Al-Qaeda Discounted
Andrew Cockburn: Sanctions after 1997 were unnecessary
Carpetbagger Report: There was 'almost a patriotism police'
Alexander Cockburn: Wolfowitz's War
MSNBC: Tim Russert interviews Sen. Joe biden
Justin Raimondo: In defense of George Tenet (prewar intel recap)
Gordon Prather: Tenet, Nukes, and Stinking Smut
Walter Pincus: Assessments Made in 2003 Foretold Situation in Iraq
Reuters: Told you so, U.N. Iraq arms inspectors' report says
TP: National Intel Director: Bush Admin. Manipulated Iraq Intel
Gareth Porter: Source: Israel Told US to Target Iran, Not Iraq
Sidney Blumenthal: Bush knew Saddam had no WMD
Alternet: Curveball: The Iraqi defector Bush used to sell the war
Andrew Sullivan: Torture and the WMD fiasco
YouTube: 60 Minutes on WMD and Curveball
George Will: Curveball, Swing and A Miss
Craig Unger: WMD fiasco deliberately cooked up
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Stephen Zunes: Hillary lies, inspectors not thrown out
Iraqi scientist gave CIA info that should have prevented war
Robert Parry: Colin Powell's Fateful Lies
Jonathan Schwarz: What Colin Powell knew 5 years ago
William Blum: How Could Hillary Have Known?
Yahoo: Pentagon study: No link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda
Harper's editor: We're seeing a lot of self-censorship on Iraq
McClatchy News: Pentagon review finds no Osama-Saddam link
Gordon Prather: Scott Ritter: Reflections
Scott Ritter: Dinner with Ahmed
Glenn Greenwald: Corporate executives forced pro-war narrative
Nukes & Spooks: Memo to Scott McClellan: Here's what happened
Jim Lobe: Senate finds pre-war Bush claims exaggerated, false
Jason Leopold: Senate hits Bush, Cheney on Iraq intel
Justin Raimondo: Tim Russert was War Party's sounding board
Scott Ritter: Where are the weapons of mass destruction?
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Key Excerpts from Iraq Intel Archives [NOTE: This included a total of 218 inspections at 141 sites — including 21 sites suggested by the CIA! See here.]
At this stage, the following can be stated:
As I stated above, the IAEA will naturally continue further to scrutinize and investigate all of the above issues.
[NOTE: The invasion of Iraq was on 17 March 2003.] More to come...
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Col. Wilkerson: WMD Intel was a 'Hoax' (21 Jan 07): Colin Powell's Chief of Staff reports on the serious doubts regarding the WMD intel that the Secretary of State presented to the UN as justification for the Iraq invasion. From a very high-level insider, a Republican, and a military man. He should be a reliable critic, one would think! Note that the following is an entire documentary on PBS.
There should really be a vigorous and probing investigation of this crucial issue, even if it is history. The cheap excuse of 'there is enough blame to go around' is self-serving for the Washington elite (including the many pro-war pundits). The evidence to the Security Council was a turning-point or trigger for a disastrous war. It is perhaps too much to call it a 'war crime', though it seems like some kind of crime, if true. However, I would let off people like Wilkerson, who came clean.
Some specifics from the documentary are that (i) various 'sources' were known to be bogus by a variety of intelligence agencies (which contradicts the mantra that 'everybody thought Saddam had WMD'); (ii) that Cheney 'hijacked' the decision-making process and exerted 'undue influence' on the CIA; (iii) that CIA director Tenet was too close to the president and too willing to please him; and (iv) that the UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has said that he has investigated all the sites that concerned the Americans, prior to the war, and had turned up nothing. I would add that we have learned (again) that the politicians at the top can be dishonest and incompetent, despite the best efforts of intelligent and hard-working professionals in the mid-levels of government.
This is really all incredibly damning. It is also damning that the issue is fading away and that the vast majority of Republicans, as well as many Democrats, don't seem to care. Do we deserve to be a superpower? Are we a threat to the world as great as those we fear? Thousands have been maimed and killed based on dishonest behavior, a stable dictatorship has been plunged into ugly and predictable sectarian violence, Iran's power has been enhanced, Muslim anger has been further inflamed (which could lead to more terrorism), and the world seems a more dangerous place — all based on stupidity and dishonest, not on an honest mistake. We need to do some serious soul searching, but most Americans are too busy entertaining themselves.
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Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski: Intel never supported neocon claims (2 Mar 07): Here is another former military insider who claims that the administration propaganda leading up to the Iran invasion was cooked. The article describes Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (ret.) as 'a veteran of the Pentagon [and National Security Agency] with firsthand experience of the administration's cherry-picking of intelligence'.
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Well, I worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and up until mid February I was in Near East South Asia, which is the office that owns the Office of Special Plans, they were our sister office. And so Iraq is one of the areas. And there's a great degree of excitement, there's a, we didn't know when we would invade Iraq, and many people thought it would be in February, late February, early March and it actually was like I think march 23 is when we actually conducted that attack on Baghdad and that kind of thing. Most people in the Pentagon, there's 23,000 people worked in the Pentagon. Most of those people were as in the dark as any of the Americans. They believed what they read in the papers, and what they read in the papers, particularly The New York Times and The Washington Post had been, for the most part, planted by The Administration. We know this now, the whole Congress knows this now, they've had a number of hearings publicly faltered, I think even the DODIG just recently faltered, Doug Feith and his whole organization for planting and providing misleading stories, many of which were later leaked on purpose to the press. A friendly press, of course, Judith Miller was not, was not hostile to the intentions of this administration. They wanted to go into Iraq, and they intended to go into Iraq. We did go into Iraq, and all that was really needed was to bring onboard the American people, and to bring onboard the Congress. But not necessarily to declare war. Congress has never been asked to declare war on Iraq. And they won't be asked to declare war on Iran even though we will conduct that war. These guys had an agenda. In fact, one of the things that I did learn as a result of having my eyes opened in that final tour in the Pentagon is that neo-conservatives, their foreign policy is very activist, you could say that's a nice way to say it, very activist, it's very oriented towards the United States as a benevolent dictator, a benevolent guiding hand for the world, particularly the Middle East. And it's very much a pro-Israel policy, and it's a policy that says, we should be able to do whatever we want to do, if we see it in our interest. Now, Americans don't see any value, most Americans, 75 percent of Americans want the troops home now. They don't see any value to having our troops in Iraq. They didn't see any value in that in 2002. But, they had a story sold to them, which was of course that Saddam Hussein somehow was involved with 9/11, had WMDs, and was a serious threat, an imminent threat, a grave threat to the United States.
JAMES HARRIS: For those people that think somehow that government officials, even though you work for the government, were complicit in this effort to move into Iraq. I want you to be clear, as a worker there, you were doing what you thought was right at the time. Is that a safe thing to say?
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: We were doing, I'll tell ya, there's two parts of how the story is sold, how the propaganda was put forth on the American people, and how it's been put forth on them today in terms of Iran. You have political appointees in every government agency, and they switch out every time you get a new president, and that's totally normal. Usually those, the numbers increase after every president, they always get a few more. So Bush was no different. He brought in a number of political appointees: Doug Feith, certainly Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. But also a number of political appointees at what you would call a lower level, like my level - Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel level. And they're not military officers, they're civilians. And they're brought in, and this is where the propaganda was kind of put together, this is where the so-called alternative intelligence assessments were put together by the civilian appointees of the Bush Administration. Most of which, in fact, probably all of the Pentagon shared a neo-conservative world vision, which has a particular role for us, and that included the topping of Saddam Hussein, and it includes the toppling of the leadership in Tehran. These guys are the ones doing it, they're doing it. They're putting all the propaganda, they're spreading stories, planting stuff in the media. They're doing that to people in The Pentagon, the civil, the Civil Service core in The Pentagon, which is about half of them, and the other half which are uniformed military officers serving anywhere from three to four, five years, sometimes tours in The Pentagon. We're looking at regular intel, we're looking at the stuff the CIA and the DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency produces. And that stuff never said, that stuff never said Saddam Hussein had WMDs, had a delivery system, was a threat to the United States. It never said that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11 or that Saddam Hussein worked with Al Qaeda. That intelligence never said that.
JAMES HARRIS: Did they tell you to shut up?
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Absolutely! [Laughs] That's a funny thing, and of course, here's how it worked. Once the Office of Special Plans was set up formally, now they were informally set up prior to the fall of 2002, but formally they became an office with office space and that whole bit. And the first act to follow that setup of the Office of Special Plans, we had a staff meeting, and our boss, Bill Ludy, who was the boss of Special Plans technically, not in reality but on paper. And he announced to us that from now on, action officers, staff officers such as myself and all my peers, at least in that office, and I presume this went all the way through the rest of policy, but we were told that when we needed to fill in data, putting it in papers that we would send up, doing our job, as we did our daily job, we were no longer to look at CIA and DIA intelligence, we were simply to call the Office of Special Plans and they would send down to us talking points, which we would incorporate verbatim no deletions, no additions, no modifications into every paper that we did. And of course, that was very unusual and all the action officers are looking at each other like, well that's interesting. We're not to look at the intelligence any more, we're simply to go to this group of political appointees and they will provide to us word for word what we should say about Iraq, about WMD and about terrorism. And this is exactly what our orders were. And there were people [Laughs] a couple of people, and I have to say, I was not one of these people who said, 'you know, I'm not gonna do that, I'm not gonna do that because there's something I don't like about it, it's incorrect in some way.' And they experimented with sending up papers that did not follow those instructions, and those papers were 100 percent of the time returned back for correction. So we weren't allowed to put out anything except what Office of Special Plans was producing for us. And that was only partially based on intelligence, and partially based on a political agenda. So this is how they did it. And I'll tell you what, civil servants and military people, we follow orders, okay. And we buy into it. And we don't suspect that our leaders are nefarious, we don't suspect that. They, they quite frankly have to go a long way to prove to us that they are nefarious. That's how it worked, and I imagine it's working much the same way there in terms of Iran.
JAMES HARRIS: Obviously you've been in the military for quite a while. Has this every happened to your knowledge in any other Pentagon, where a political appointees have the power to just control the...
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: Sure, well sure, Vietnam is filled with examples... UPDATE (2 Mar 07): Wikipedia has this to say about her:
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Scott Ritter's Views (20 Mar 07): Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector, is becoming increasingly credible as a voice on WMD intelligence and even on US foreign policy, at least in my eyes. At first, he seemed like too much of a maverick to me, and his credentials a bit dubious on more than the narrowest technical matters. However, by posting a great deal from him on my Iran page, regarding their alleged attempts to build a nuclear weapon, I have come to respect him as much as anybody else on these matters. After all, our greatest 'experts' blundered terribly on Iraq, so it is time to consider new (i.e. non establishment) voices. Ritter certainly seems to have mastered a great deal of material, and he speaks clearly and forcefully, as you can see on some of the videos. He raises powerful and disturbing questions about the integrity and competence of both major political parties, as well as the mainstream media and certain powerful lobbies such as AIPAC. See also here.
IAEA'S El-BARADEI TO UNSC ON 7 MAR 03
CNN, 7 Mar 03
After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapon program in Iraq.
One, there is no indication of resumed nuclear activities in those buildings that were identified through the use of satellite imagery as being reconstructed or newly erected since 1998, nor any indication of nuclear-related prohibited activities at any inspected sites.
Second, there is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import uranium since 1990.
Three, there is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import aluminum tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment. Moreover, even had Iraq pursued such a plan, it would have encountered practical difficulties in manufacturing centrifuge out of the aluminum tubes in question.
Fourth, although we are still reviewing issues related to magnets and magnet-production, there is no indication to date that Iraq imported magnets for use in centrifuge enrichment program.
CNN: 7 Mar 03: Hans Blix's report
CNN: 7 Mar 03: U.S. Secretary of State Powell's response
CNN: 7 Mar 03: Iraqi ambassador Aldouri's remarks
CNN: 7 Mar 03: French Foreign Minister Villepin's remarks
COL. WILKERSON: WMD INTEL WAS A 'HOAX'
NOW (on PBS), 3 Feb 06
On the third anniversary of former Secretary of State Colin Powell's landmark speech to the United Nations laying out the Bush Administration's case for the Iraq war, a high-level insider who helped write the address makes a startling claim. Powell's then Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson says that what he later found out shocked him: that much of Powell's speech was false. 'I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community, and the United Nations Security Council', he says. NOW reports on the serious doubts that existed about the key evidence being used by the American government at the very time Powell's speech was being planned and delivered.
COMMENT: It must be stressed that this was before the invasion. This is an entirely different issue than the fact that no weapons turned up after the invasion. When 60 Minutes recently asked President Bush about the WMD, he admitted that there was an intelligence failure and that the government was looking into it, so it would not be repeated. In other words, an honest mistake. Col. Wilkerson's testimony contradicts this. Sadly, 60 Minutes dropped the ball and failed to remind Bush of allegations such as Wilkerson's. Not that it would have done much good. Bush would have said that it was just somebody's opinion.
LT. COL. KWIATKOWSKI (RET.) ON IRAQ WMD INTEL
Truthdig, audio and transcript, 27 Feb 07
JAMES HARRIS: And I always note Scott Ritter, because I spoke to him, and I couldn't believe that we didn't take the advice of people like him that were saying that there's nothing there, there's nothing. Can you describe for us a typical day, if we went in around March, we're approaching that anniversary, we went in around March of '3. What was it like in The Pentagon?
Plus ca change, plus c'est le meme! Kwiatkowski also provides an insight our presence in Iraq which hasn't been aired as often as the WMD fiasco:
However, many in Congress, and certainly in this administration agree, and this is Democrats and Republicans, like the idea that we have gone into Iraq, we have built four mega bases, they are complete. Most of the money we gave to Halliburton was for construction and completion of these bases. We have probably, of the 150,000, 160,000 troops we have in Iraq probably 110,000 of those folks are associated with one of those four mega bases. Safely ensconced behind acres and acres of concrete. To operate there indefinitely, no matter what happens in Baghdad, no matter who takes over, no matter if the country splits into three pieces or it stays one. No matter what happens, we have those mega bases, and there's many in Congress and certainly in this administration, Republican and Democrat alike that really like that. Part of the reason I think that we went into Iraq was to reestablish a stronger foothold than we had in Saudi Arabia, but also a more economical, a more flexible, in terms of who we want to hit. If you want to hit Syria, can you do it from Iraq? Of course you can. And now you can do it from bases that will support any type of airplane you want, any number of troops in barracks. I mean we can do things from Iraq. And this is what they wanted. So, yeah, we don't like being lied to. But quite frankly, many people in the Congress, and certainly this administration, when they call Iraq a success, they mean it, and this is why.
Yes, I'm beginning to suspect that a great many Democratic and Republican leaders (and their acolytes in the think tanks and media) have bought into the American imperial dream, partly for oil, partly for Israel, and partly out of sheer hubris. (Politicians tend to have big egos, you know.) It seems that the number of American bases in the world, about 700 at last count, keeps growing, never diminishes. Our tentacles are everywhere, and any public doubts are simply a puerile inconvenience to be massaged by the Powers That Be, on both sides of the aisle. Kwiatkowski's whole interview is worth reading. It gives me renewed faith in 'ordinary' Americans, or at least some of them, but not in the overall political process. (OK, she does have a Ph.D. See Wikipedia.)
Following the American Conservative and Salon articles, Kwiatkowski began to receive criticism from several conservative sources that supported President Bush's policies. Michael Rubin of the National Review argued that she had exaggerated her knowledge of the OSP's workings and claimed that she had ties to Lyndon LaRouche[6]. Their criticisms were later backed by the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence which found that Kwiatkowski could not cite a single example to support her claims [7] (pp. 282-283). Republican U.S. Senator John Kyl criticized her in a speech on the Senate floor [8]. On a Fox News program, host John Gibson and former Republican National Committee communications director Clifford May described her as an anarchist[9]. Kwiatkowski responded, saying, among other points, that she had never supported or dealt with LaRouche [10].
Given all that has come out about the WMD intel fiasco, I don't automatically genuflect before something called the 'Bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence'. They may just be wimping out, as has been the custom of the Senate for several decades now, when it comes to war. Frankly, Kwiatkowski seems quite credible to me. To understand better the stupidity and/or duplicity of American leaders when it comes to war, read this interview with the late David Hackworth of Vietnam fame.
Lew Rockwell: Karen Kwiatkowski Archives
Q&A: Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski
Jim Lobe: Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network
Karen Kwiatkowski: Our Mad Mad Mad Mad Vice President Speaks
Online Newshour: Interview with Scott Ritter (1998)
Antonia Zerbisias: CNN's Hatchet Job on Scott Ritter (2002)
TIME: Scott Ritter in His Own Words (2002)
Salon: Feature on Scott Ritter (2002)
Justin Raimondo: Target: Scott Ritter (2003)
The Nation: Ritter and Hersh: Iraq Confidential (2005)
Scott Ritter: Dems must offer a new blueprint for Iraq (2006)
Radar Magazine: Scott Ritter: Right but poor (2007)
Scott Ritter: Bill Clinton and WMD duplicity (2007)
Scott Ritter: Stop the Iran War Before It Starts (2007)
VIDEO: ROBERT SCHEER INTERVIEWS SCOTT RITTER
Truthdig, 20 Mar 07
For the record, here are some notes from this important interview, representing Ritter's views:
Hillary is a 'damned liar' when she says that her Iraq war vote was in 'good faith' and was based on misleading intelligence. For eight years, Bill Clinton undermined the weapons inspectors, in the name of a policy of regime change. Even today, the CIA 'commits' that Iraq had disarmed by the summer of 1991. The weapons inspectors reported to Clinton in 1993, at the beginning of his tenure. Nevertheless, Clinton ignored them to pursue sanctions at the UN and pass the Iraq Liberation Act ($100 million), as a policy of regime change.
Regime change began under Reagan and Bush I, since our previous ally Saddam had become an embarrassment. The 'crimes against humanity' for which Saddam was hanged were faits accomplis before Rumsfeld (under Reagan) visited Saddam in 1983 and had the famous picture taken embracing the dictator. Ritter insists that regime change is illegal, since the Senate has ratified treaties that accept the UN prohibitions against such policies. When the inspectors were expelled in 1998, it was after the US engineered a crisis by using the inspectors to spy on Iraq, to obtain intelligence that was indeed later used in the bombing that followed the expulsion.
One of the greatest problems is that the American public knows nothing about the world. Thus, they are easily led into ill-conceived wars, especially when frightened by emergencies like 9/11. Congressman Reyes, the new head of the House Intelligence Committee, did not know the difference between Sunnis and Shia!
Saddam went from ally to 'Hitler' after he invaded Kuwait. How many Americans realize the history of Iraq: that it was cobbled together by the British Empire, and that Saddam's secular Baath party had to use force to suppress tribal and sectarian violence (Sunni vs. Shia)? Our blundering invasion undid this glue, and the quick result was more than 600,000 Iraqis dead, as opposed to about 100,000 under decades of Saddam.
We can and must get out of Iraq, especially in light of our ignorance, which can only make things worse. The US military itself admits that much of the violence would not happen without our presence (says Ritter the military man). Our occupation legitimizes the 'insurgents', who can claim to be 'freedom fighters' (as happened in Vietnam).
We should not stay unless most Americans can answer this question: What is the significance of Karbala, Baghdad and Kirkuk? Answer: Karbala is the birthplace of Shiism, where the followers of Hussein (a grandson of Mohammed) were massacred by Sunnis, thus setting the stage for centuries of sectarian conflict. Baghdad is the birthplace of the strict Wahabi creed of Al Qaeda: It was sacked by the Mongols, and this was attributed to a lack of piety (including Jihad fervor). The Americans are the new Mongols! Kirkuk is an oil center where Sunnis, Shias and Kurds meet; the civil war is likely to start here. And, of course, our Iraq disaster has greatly empowered Iran. All in all, given this history, Iraq was the worse possible place to experiment with social engineering!
Some other comments from this interview on Iran's nuclear capabilities will be placed in my Iran Intelligence section (scroll down).
Google Video: Scott Ritter: Weapons of Mass Delusion (2006)
Google Video: Scott Ritter and Ray McGovern on Iraq (2006)
Scott Ritter: Calling Out Idiot America
LA Weekly: Snide, frivolous, stupid article on Ritter ... from LA!
Scott Ritter: The Final Act of Submission
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Gordon Prather Recounts Pre-Invasion (24 Mar 07): Gordon Prather — a physicist and thus a highly intelligent person — reminds us of what happened between the IAEA, the Bush administration and Congress in those crucial months leading up to the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003. Those events are so important that I will take the liberty of quoting at length (see the article for some important links):
FOOLED AGAIN: CONGRESS THEN AND NOW
Gordon Prather, Antiwar, 24 Mar 07
Past and present Congresspersons from across the political spectrum insist that if they had known then, what they know now, they would never have allowed President Bush to use the conditional authority they had provided him to launch a pre-emptive war against Iraq.Of course, they should have known when they gave him that authority in October, 2002 that their basic presumption:
Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizationswas false.
Should have known, because in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, the International Atomic Energy Agency Action Team on Iraq was established by UN Security Council Resolution 687 and was charged with overseeing the destruction [or removal from Iraq] of all nuclear-weapons-usable materials, components and subsystems, plus any and all related research, development, support or manufacturing facilities.
In what amounted to his final report as Director-General, Hans Blix concluded way back in 1997 that;
Most of the IAEA activities involving the destruction, removal and rendering harmless of the components of Iraq's nuclear weapons programme, which to date have been revealed and destroyed, were completed by the end of 1992.Of course, when Bush got Congress to give him that conditional authority to use force, he assured them he was committed to seeking a diplomatic solution. He got the UN Security Council to pass Resolution 1441, which required Iraq to provide the IAEA and other UN inspectors 'immediate, unimpeded, unconditional and unrestricted access' to any and all 'areas, facilities, buildings, equipment, records and means of transport', as well as 'private access' to all pertinent officials.
Consequently, IAEA Director-General was able to report to the Security Council on March 7, 2003 that
Since the resumption of inspection a little over three months ago, and particularly during the three weeks since my last ordered report to the council, the IAEA has made important progress in identifying what nuclear-related capabilities remain in Iraq and in its assessment of whether Iraq has made any effort to revive its past nuclear program during the intervening four years since inspections were brought to a halt.At this stage, the following can be stated:
One, there is no indication of resumed nuclear activities in those buildings that were identified through the use of satellite imagery as being reconstructed or newly erected since 1998, nor any indication of nuclear-related prohibited activities at any inspected sites.
Second, there is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import uranium since 1990.
Three, there is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import aluminum tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment.
Hans Blix, since 1998 the Chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, gave a similar, although less conclusive, null report about Iraq's chemical, biological and ballistic missile activities.
In other words, the Congressional presumptions of October 2002 and the Cheney Cabal allegations of 2002 and 2003 about Iraq's weapons programs were all wrong! Saddam Hussein was not a threat even to his neighbors, much less to the United States.
At the very least, the case for pre-emptive invasion (an extreme measure under any circumstances) now seems very weak. Prather goes on to remind us how Congress has failed to learn its lesson: Pelosi recently scratched wording from the new Iraq bill requiring Bush to obtain Congressional approval before attacking Iran. It seems she was responding to pressure from AIPAC. There is a legitimate debate about how quickly to get out of Iraq. Even thoughtful antiwar critics may not want to yank the troops out tomorrow. (For example, we may be able to facilitate a partition of Iraq as the best means to avoid civil war.) But to fail to keep those words in was unconscionable! I cannot but agree with Pat Buchanan that it was 'capitulation' and with Justin Raimondo that is was 'betrayal'.
And to add to my shock, it has been so little reported in the mainstream press; even some of the antiwar sites seem silent, and I have been looking. This is bizarre! There should be a howl of protest. It is much more important than the stupid politics over Attorney General Gonzales that now fills the headlines. Perhaps that politics is how both parties collude to distract the public from their renewed surrender to the neocons and allied forces, like AIPAC. And I remind you again that the MSM is in on it too. Shocking!
Gordon Prather: More MSM obfuscation on prewar Iraqi WMD
Gordon Prather: Conspiracy, Collusion, War
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Articles on Douglas Feith
Robert Scheer: Before the Invasion, There Was Feith
Robert Dreyfuss: Feith-Libby Lies Exposed
Think Progress: CIA's Pillar responds to Feith
Think Progress: Wallace Calls Out Feith For Lying On Fox News
TP: Doug Feith Responds With 'Naked Incoherence'
TP: Former CIA Official: Feith's Claims Are 'Hogwash'
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Moyers' Damning Documentary (26 Apr 07): Bill Moyers aired this excellent documentary on public television last night, recounting in detail how the flames of war leading to the disastrous invasion of Iraq in March 2003 were fanned by the entire Washington elite, in an orgy of hubristic groupthink. Not only did the spineless Democrats roll over and play dead for the militaristic Republicans, but the supposedly 'liberal' New York Times and Washington Post were key players in the hysteria. One media hero was Knight-Ridder, which exposed the dubious nature of the WMD evidence, but strangely enough, this organization has little influence inside the beltway, despite being larger that the NYT or the WP. This proves that the American elite is a self-contained and mutually backscratching bubble, divorced from reality as well as the larger American society. Unfortunately, the elite media can still influence public opinion, at least during times of crisis, such as during the post 9/11 hysteria. A weakness in the documentary is the failure to discuss the role of AIPAC (not to be confused with the 'Jewish Lobby'). I will post excerpts of this important documentary as time permits.
John Nichols: Bill Moyers and the Fight for American Journalism
Justin Raimondo: Our Captive Media
Gordon Prather: Enabling Bush's Wars of Aggression
The War of Words: 101st Fighting Keyboarders (satire)
UPDATE (2 May 07): Here are some excerpts from the Moyers documentary. It should really be read in its entirety.
TRANSCRIPT OF BUYING THE WAR
Bill Moyers Journal, 25 Apr 07
BILL MOYERS: Four years ago this spring the Bush administration took leave of reality and plunged our country into a war so poorly planned it soon turned into a disaster. The story of how high officials misled the country has been told. But they couldn't have done it on their own; they needed a compliant press, to pass on their propaganda as news and cheer them on.Since then thousands of people have died, and many are dying to this day. Yet the story of how the media bought what the White House was selling has not been told in depth on television. As the war rages into its fifth year, we look back at those months leading up to the invasion, when our press largely surrendered its independence and skepticism to join with our government in marching to war.
[. . .]
BILL MOYERS: What I was wrestling with that night listening to you is; once we let our emotions out as journalists on the air, once we say, we'll line up with the President, can we ever really say to the country the President's out of line.
DAN RATHER: Yes. Of course you can. Of course you can. No journalist should try to be a robot and say 'They've attacked my country, they've killed thousands of people but I don't feel it.' ... And I can serve my country best by being the best journalist I can be. That's the way I can be patriotic. ... There were some people, who, I think, did a better job than others. But overall and in the main there's no question that we didn't do a good job.
[. . .]
BILL MOYERS: Walter Isaacson was then Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of CNN.
WALTER ISAACSON: And there was even almost a patriotism police which, you know, they'd be up there on the internet sort of picking anything a Christiane Amanpour, or somebody else, would say, as if it were disloyal.
BILL MOYERS: We interviewed a former reporter at CNN who had been there through that period. And this reporter said this quote, 'Everybody on staff just sort of knew not to push too hard to do stories critical of the Bush Administration.'
WALTER ISAACSON: Especially right after 9/11. Especially when the war in Afghanistan is going on. There was a real sense that you don't get that critical of a government that's leading us in war time.
[. . .]
BILL MOYERS: When American forces went after the terrorist bases in Afghanistan, network and cable news reported the civilian casualties — the patriot police came knocking.
WALTER ISAACSON: We'd put it on the air and by nature of a 24 hour TV network, it was replaying over and over again. So, you would get phone calls. You would get advertisers. You would get the Administration.
BILL MOYERS: You said pressure from advertisers?
WALTER ISAACSON: Not direct pressure from advertisers, but big people in corporations were calling up and saying, 'You're being anti-American here'.
BILL MOYERS: So Isaacson sent his staff a memo, leaked to The Washington Post: 'It seems perverse' he said, 'to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan.' And he ordered his reporters and anchors to balance the images of civilian devastation with reminders of September 11th. ...
BILL MOYERS: Newspapers were squeezed, too. This one in Florida told its editors: 'Do not use photos on page 1a showing civilian casualties. Our sister paper has done so and received hundreds and hundreds of threatening e-mails.'
And then there was Fox News: Whose chief executive — the veteran Republican operative and media strategist Roger Ailes — had privately urged the white house to use the harshest measures possible after 9/11...
[. . .]
DAN RATHER: I knew before 9/11 that many of the people [i.e. neocons] who came into the administration were committed to toppling Saddam Hussein. And doing it with military force if necessary. ...
JOHN KING (War Room with Wolf Blitzer, CNN, 19 Nov 01): Richard Perle? Next phase Saddam Hussein?
RICHARD PERLE: Absolutely.
WILLIAM KRISTOL (FOX News, 24 Nov 01): One person close to the debate said to me this week that it's no longer a question of if, it's a question of how we go after Saddam Hussein.
BILL MOYERS: In the weeks after 9/11 they seemed to be on every channel, gunning for Hussein.
TED KOPPEL (NIGHTLINE 11/28/01): You are probably the hawkiest of the hawks on this. Why?
JAMES WOOLSEY: Well I don't know that I accept that characterization but it's probably not too far off. I think that the Baghdad regime is a serious danger to world peace.
RICHARD PERLE (ABC, This Week, 18 Nov 01): Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein, plus his known contact with terrorists, including Al Qaeda terrorists, is simply a threat too large to continue to tolerate.
BILL MOYERS: Among their leading spokesmen were Richard Perle and James Woolsey. Both sat on the Defense Policy Board advising Donald Rumsfeld. And they used their inside status to assure the press that overthrowing Hussein would be easy.
RICHARD PERLE (CNN, 19 Nov 01): We would be seen as liberators in Iraq. ...
BILL MOYERS: Charles Krauthammer and other top columnists at The Washington Post also saw the hand of Saddam Hussein in the terrorist attacks. Jim Hoagland implicated Hussein within hours after the suicide bombers struck on 9/11. And the Post's George Will fired away on the talk shows.
[. . .]
BOB SIMON: From overseas we had a clearer view. I mean we knew things or suspected things that — perhaps the Washington press corps could not suspect. For example, the absurdity of putting up a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.
BILL MOYERS: Absurdity. The Washington press corps cannot question an absurdity?
BOB SIMON: Well maybe the Washington press corps based inside the beltway wasn't as aware as those of us who are based in the Middle East and who spend a lot of time in Iraq. I mean when the Washington press corps travels, it travels with the president or with the secretary of state. And -
BILL MOYERS: In a bubble. ...
BOB SIMON: Saddam as most tyrants, was a total control freak. He wanted total control of his regime. Total control of the country. And to introduce a wild card like Al Qaeda in any sense was just something he would not do. So I just didn't believe it for an instant.
[. . .]
BILL MOYERS: John Walcott Wasn't buying the official line, either. The Bureau Chief of Knight Ridder News Service [now McClatchy News], he and his reporters covered Washington for 32 newspapers spread across the country.
JOHN WALCOTT: Our readers aren't here in Washington. They aren't up in New York. They aren't the people who send other people's kids to war. They're the people who get sent to war. ... It was not clear to us why anyone was asking questions about Iraq in the wake of an attack that had Al Qaeda written all over it.
BILL MOYERS: He assigned his two top reporters to investigate the claims. Between them, Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay, had more than 40 years experience reporting on foreign affairs and national security. They had lots of sources to call on. ... They went about their reporting the old-fashioned way, with shoe leather, tracking down and meeting with sources deep inside the intelligence community. ...
BILL MOYERS: Strobel learned that within two weeks after 9/11, senior intelligence officers were growing concerned that the Bush administration was stretching 'little bits and pieces of information' to connect Saddam Hussein to Al qaeda — with no hard evidence.
And so on. There is much more like this. The Washington political elite stampeded itself into war in an orgy of mutual patriotic and militaristic stimulation. (This 'elite' is not to be confused with serious mid-level professionals at the CIA and elsewhere.) The most prestigious pundits proved worse than worthless, in total dereliction of their duty to inform the public and to provide wisdom, restraint and skepticism. (Read how major influential newspapers like the New York Times were almost willfully blind to elementary red flags in their dubious sources. Read also how the same story from the same dubious source would pop up in different places in a deceptive appearance of mutual corroboration.) Journalistic integrity had to be supplied by some valiant outside-the-beltway professionals, who lacked influence, and who weren't getting rich and famous either, unlike the sycophantic courtier hacks on the talk shows. It was a complete moral failure on the part of the educated and responsible elite of the most powerful nation on earth. All that fancy education down the drain. (Strangely enough, people as diverse as Pat Buchanan and Ted Kennedy are the rare exceptions.) That's what happens when your ambition is more important to you than anything else. You prostitute yourself to the powers-that-be.
Justin Raimondo: The Failure of the 'Mainstream'
Eric Alterman: Sullivan's Travails
Stefan Kanfer: Sontagism (the queen of knee-jerk anti-Americanism)
Noam Chomsky: Albert Interviews Chomsky on Iraq
Robert Fisk: Being Set Up for a War on Iraq
GOP AND MEDIA REWRITE IRAQ HISTORY
Robert Parry, 15 May 07
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and radio personality Jay Diamond are right to wonder why Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney got away with rewriting a key chapter of the Iraq War history without political reporters raising a peep.At the June 5 Republican debate, co-sponsored by CNN, Romney defended George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq in March 2003 on the grounds that Saddam Hussein refused to let United Nations weapons inspectors in to search for WMD.
If Saddam 'had opened up his country to I.A.E.A. inspectors, and they'd come in and they'd found that there were no weapons of mass destruction', the war might have been averted, the former Massachusetts governor said.
But the reality is that Hussein did open up his country through the fall and winter of 2002-03, giving Hans Blix and his U.N. inspection team free rein to check out suspected WMD sites. It was President Bush who forced the U.N. inspectors out in March 2003 so his invasion could proceed.
The answer to the media question of why the U.S. press corps didn't object to Romney's bogus account is that Washington journalists have accepted this revisionist history since Bush began lying about the facts in July 2003.
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George Tenet on 60 Minutes (30 Apr 07): According to Bob Woodward, former CIA director George Tenet is famous for having told President Bush that the Iraq WMD case was a 'slam dunk', thus setting the stage for the Iraq invasion. As we all know, the WMD never materialized. Last night, on 60 Minutes, Tenet had a chance to clarify that infamous statement. He claimed that he meant that some particular improvements in his briefing requested by Bush were a slam dunk, not the whole issue of Iraq WMD. (Come again? Wasn't this briefing about Saddam and WMD?) Tenet seems to be saying that it was all about fixing some Powerpoint slides! I guess this just shows how muckraking journalists like Woodward can twist quotes way out of context in order to sell a book. Well, so what? Woodward was busy sucking up to Bush back when his reporting would have made a difference, as was most of the Washington press corps.
Tenet also claimed that he never thought there was a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda. That was perhaps the main reason we went to war, along with the fictitious WMD. It's good to know that someone so high-up could get that one right, not that it made any difference. It seems that this administration just didn't listen to the CIA director except when he said what they wanted to hear. Or maybe he had laryngitis at all the meetings. Also, this shows what a fool Christopher Hitchens is, who kept insisting there was such a link, and who seems to have had some influence with politically-oriented web surfers.
Tenet also relates how on September 12, 2001, he encountered Richard Perle, who was sure Iraq was a key player in the events of the previous day, and who said that now was the time to get Saddam. Apparently, Bill Kristol has denied this meeting occurred, but I find it entirely credible, especially since Kristol denies it. This proves that the plan to invade Iraq was being hatched long before 9/11, which just adds another layer of lies to the Bush-Neocon Axis of Mendacity. (See also Richard Clarke.) It was enough of a lie to claim the Saddam link after 9/11, but to be planning a pre-emptive invasion long before 9/11 sounds no different from Pearl Harbor to me. One might speak of war crimes, but let us be honest and remember that the definition of a 'war crime' often depends on who has just won the war, i.e. on raw power.
Another point was that Tenet saw no problem with 'enhanced interrogations' of Al Qaeda suspects, especially right after 9/11, when nobody knew what was coming next. We can take 'enhanced interrogations' to mean torture in some sense. (It was curious to watch Tenet implicitly affirm torture after explicitly denying it. So much politics and/or irrationality from the 'Director of Intelligence'!) It would be easy to condemn this attitude, but I'll have to admit that I could get scared too, in the heat of a crisis. Still, I doubt torture ever really works, so it would probably be best to reject it in any form and under any circumstances. And let's not forget that there are other ways of inflicting immoral suffering, such as bombing the hell out of people based on flimsy pretexts. How come we don't agonize so much over that?
CNN: Woodward: Tenet told Bush WMD case a 'slam dunk'
60 Minutes: George Tenet: At The Center Of The Storm
NPR: Tenet: No 'Serious Debate' Held over Iraq Options
TP: Tenet on Perle conversation
TP: Tenet: Cheney staffers idolized Challabi
Ray McGovern: Poor Tenet, he still doesn't get it
Juan Cole: George Tenet on the staircase with the neocons
Justin Raimondo: In defense of George Tenet
Christopher Hitchens: George Tenet's disgraceful new book
Gordon Prather: Tenet's Failures
Bob Woodward: Reaping the Whirlwind
Jeffrey Goldberg: Woodward vs. Tenet
Gordon Prather: Tenet's Greatest Sins
Philip Giraldi: George Tenet lies about his lies
Frank Rich: Is Condi Hiding the Smoking Gun?
ABC: This Week: Interview with Condoleezza Rice
CBS: Face the Nation: Rice Dismisses Tenet's Accusations
Joe Conason: Condi Rice never looks back
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Other Articles
A devastating attack on Mr Blair's justification for military action by Carne Ross, Britain's key negotiator at the UN, has been kept under wraps until now because he was threatened with being charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act.
In the testimony revealed today Mr Ross, 40, who helped negotiate several UN security resolutions on Iraq, makes it clear that Mr Blair must have known Saddam Hussein possessed no weapons of mass destruction. He said that during his posting to the UN, 'at no time did HMG [Her Majesty's Government] assess that Iraq's WMD (or any other capability) posed a threat to the UK or its interests'.
Sen. Bob Graham: What I Knew Before the Invasion
Media Matters: Fox News military analysts
DIPLOMAT'S DOCUMENT LAYS BARE IRAQ WAR LIES
The Independent, 16 Dec 06
The Government's case for going to war in Iraq has been torn apart by the publication of previously suppressed evidence that Tony Blair lied over Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
Robert Scheer: Libby Trial: Smoking Gun for Impeachment?
Snopes: Prewar Dems on Iraqi WMD
Christopher Ketcham: What Did Israel Know in Advance of 9/11?
Hans Blix: 'US acted like witch hunter in making case for war on Iraq'
Debra Saunders: Bush Lied is the Big Lie
Michael Scheuer: What's behind Khalid's 'confessions'
TP: Washington Post and Perle collude to spin pre-war Iraq record
IRAQ: THE WEB OF LIES
Patrick Foy, 15 May 07
In terms of strategy, 'divide and rule' is the essence of the Washington/Tel Aviv game plan to maintain Israeli paramountcy in the region. The White House project to spread 'democracy' in the Middle East, headed up by 'the neocon's neocon', Elliot Abrams, is a transparent and preposterous cover story. No one buys it. 'Divide and rule' is the actual policy, using the 'War on Terror' as a backdrop. It has been an unparalleled success so far. It has worked in Iraq, beyond expectations. It worked like a dream in Lebanon in the 1980's, and could work again at the drop of a hat. Without question, the reason behind Ehud Olmert's invasion of Lebanon last summer was to ignite a civil war. The strategy is working well in Palestine at this very moment among rival factions in Gaza and on the West Bank. The Palestinians remain under military occupation and, like the Iraqis before them, have been embargoed by Washington and the EU. They are under siege and lockdown.
David Corn: Dems wimp out on Bush and prewar Iraq intel
Paul R. Pillar: The Other Intelligence Assessments on Iraq
IRAQ: SCOWCROFT VINDICATED
CONGRESS & WHITE HOUSE SHAMED
Ralph Reiland, Antiwar, 12 June 07
Ten days before the vote in the U.S. Senate to authorize a preemptive war against Iraq, a 90-page classified version of the National Intelligence Estimate, containing numerous qualifications and dissents on Iraq's weapons capabilities, was made available to all 100 senators. It was the most comprehensive analysis by America's intelligence agencies. Only six of the senators read it.[. . .]
On Aug. 15, 2002, the morning after the White House received the CIA's words of caution, the Wall Street Journal published Don't Attack Saddam by Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser in the administrations of Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush.
Acknowledging that Saddam Hussein was 'a menace' who 'brutalizes his own people' and 'launched war on two of his neighbors', Scowcroft contended that 'an attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counter-terrorist campaign we have undertaken'. There was 'scant evidence to tie Saddam to terrorist organizations, and even less to the Sept. 11 attacks', argued Scowcroft.
Sidney Blumenthal: Cooking the intelligence, again
Matt Yglesias: Establishment thinktanks promote crackpot thinktanks
Ray McGovern: Greenspan Spills Beans on Oil
WP: Greenspan: Ouster of Hussein Crucial for Oil Security
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